A Public Participation Forum for the FDA Center for Tobacco Products and its Federal Advisory Committee (TPSAC)

From: Vaping Post

British American Tobacco Plc, (BAT), has launched its own Heat Not Burn, HNB, electronic cigarette, Glo, which will start selling in Japan next month. This product will be directly competing with Philip Morris International Inc’s own product, iQOS, and will be sold at a significant 20% lower price than the latter.

By Diane Caruana

Japan is the world’s fifth biggest tobacco market, and is the only country where three HNB products are currently on the market. The first was Ploom Tech by Japan Tobacco, followed by iQOS by PMI and now Glo. The latter is a sleek silver device, its shape has been described by Bloomberg as resembling that of an iPod and it will sell at 8,000yen, ($77), while a packet of twenty Neostiks, which are the refills for the Glo device, will retail at 420 yen, pretty much as much as a pack of regular cigarettes.

Learning from their competitors

The Japanese people are known for their love of gadgets, hence there is no doubt that this will be tough competition for the other two devices. “Japanese consumers are always hungry for innovation and we want to be the number one in the Japanese market,” added Donato Del Vecchio, a spokesman for BAT. Indeed in the past Japan Tobacco and PMI couldn’t keep up with the demand for their products, and in regards to this Roberta Palazzetti, president of BAT Japan, said that they are learning from the problems faced by their competitors, adding “We are not expecting to have a capacity issue, we have enough capacity to cover the Japanese market.”

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